The strange countess
happen to you and me if that gets out?” He pointed to the ceiling. “It
would mean the best part of a lifetime for you--more than a lifetime
for me. No, sir, I am well aware of the risks I am taking and more
than determined what further risks I’ll accept. You’d better have the
girl down. I suppose you want to be alone?”
He nodded and the doctor went out of the room, and was gone for a long
while. When the door opened, Lois Reddle stood framed against the dark
background of the passage. At the sight of Praye she stopped.
“You!” she said in wonder.
“Good evening, Miss Reddle. Won’t you sit down?”
Chesney was politeness itself and his manners were unimpeachable.
“I’m afraid you’ve had a very unhappy experience,” he said. “I only
learnt about it this afternoon and I came down immediately to do
whatever I could. The doctor tells me that you have been certified.”
“That is not true,” she said hotly. “I know very little about the law,
but I have been in Mr. Shaddles’ office too long to suppose that any
person can be certified as mad by one doctor! Are you going to take me
away?”
He nodded.
“And that other unfortunate woman?”
“She may go too,” he said slowly, “on conditions.”
She looked at him steadily.
“I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Praye.”
He motioned her to a chair, but she did not move.
“Now listen to me, Miss Reddle. I am taking big risks for your sake. I
needn’t particularise them, but if I fail this evening, my future, and
probably”--he hesitated to say “liberty”--“at any rate, my future is
seriously jeopardised. I’ve made this journey without the knowledge of
a person who shall be nameless and I am betraying the trust she has in
me. She will not forgive me.”
“You mean the Countess of Moron?” she asked quietly.
“There is no use in beating about the bush. I refer to the Countess of
Moron.”
“Am I here by her orders?”
He nodded.
“But why? What have I ever done to her that she should wish to injure
me?”
“You will know one of these days,” he said impatiently, “but that is
beside the point. I can save you and your mother----”
She fell back a pace.
“My mother?” she breathed. “That woman,” she pointed her trembling
finger to the door--“not my mother?” He nodded. “Here? Oh, my God!
Why?”
“She’s here for the same reason that you are here,” was his cool
reply. “Now, Miss Reddle, you’ve got to be an intelligent being. I
want you to be sensible and recognise the sacrifices I am making for
you, and to agree to my conditions for taking your mother away from
this place.”
“What are the conditions?” she asked slowly.
“The first is that you marry me!” said Chesney Praye.
Chapter Thirty-four
She looked at him bewildered, as though she could not grasp the
meaning of his words.
“That I marry you?” she repeated.
“That you marry me to-morrow. I took the precaution this afternoon of
going to Doctors’ Commons and securing a special licence, which allows
me to be married to-morrow morning. I had some trouble in getting it,
but it is here----” he tapped his breast pocket. “Before leaving
London I telegraphed to the vicar of Leitworth, a village some thirty
miles from here, and asked him to perform the ceremony at ten o’clock
to-morrow morning.”
His face was white; he was obviously labouring under the stress of
some tense emotion. Presently he went on in a lower voice:
“I will make you a rich woman. I will place you and your mother beyond
want. I will give you a position in the world that you could not dream
you would ever occupy. I’ll do something more.” He came closer to her,
and before she realised what he was doing he had gripped her
shoulders. “I will clear your mother’s name--I can’t give her back the
years she has spent in prison----”
She drew back out of his grasp.
“No!” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It may be true--all these
things you say--but I can’t marry you, Mr. Praye, and I--I don’t
believe you. My mother is in prison.”
“Your mother is in this house.”
He strode to the door and, pulling it open, called the doctor by name.
“Bring down Mrs. Pinder,” he said.
The girl stood at the farther end of the room, her hands clasped
together, waiting, hoping, yet not daring to hope. She heard a light
step on the stair, again the door opened and the woman came in.
One glance at that serene face was sufficient. In another second they
were in one another’s arms, and the girl was sobbing on her mother’s
breast.
For a minute there was silence in the room, and only the murmured
endearments of the older woman interrupted. Then Mrs. Pinder held the
girl at arm’s length and looked into her tear-stained face.
“My little Lois!” she said softly. “It hardly seems possible.”
Lois tried to speak.
“And have you come to take me away?”
Watching the girl, Chesney saw her nod, and his hopes bounded as he
introduced himself.
“I am Chesney Praye,” he said awkwardly, “a--a friend of Miss Reddle.”
“Reddle? Then Mrs. Reddle gave you her name?” She looked at Chesney.
“When do we go?” she asked.
“As soon as certain conditions are fulfilled. Will you leave us, Mrs.
Pinder?”
The woman’s eyes fell upon the girl. Gathering her in her arms, she
kissed her tenderly. Chesney, in his feverish anxiety, almost tore
them apart in his urgency. He closed the door upon Mrs. Pinder and
came back to the girl.
“Well?” he said. “I told you the truth?”
She nodded.
“And you’ll do this?”
“Marry you?” She shook her head.
“But you told your mother you would!” he said furiously. “You know
what it means, don’t you, if you refuse?”
“I can’t, I can’t! How can I marry you, Mr. Praye? You’re engaged to
the Countess of Moron----”
He interrupted her with an oath.
“Never mind about the countess! You know what I’m doing for you, don’t
you? I’m saving your life, I’m giving you your mother----”
She looked past him at the closed door.
“I can’t!” she said helplessly. “How can you ask me to decide? I--I
don’t know you, you must give me time.”
“I’ll give you as much time as it will take you to sign this paper.”
He pulled out a sheet of foolscap from his pocket and laid it on the
table.
“What is that?” she said.
“It’s an agreement. You needn’t trouble to read it. Just put your
signature here, and I’ll bring in the doctor to witness it.”
“But what is the document?” she asked, and tried to turn it back to
the first page, but he prevented her.
Her suspicion was growing, and the reaction from that tremendous
meeting had left her chilled and numb. Into her heart had crept an
uneasy suspicion that the conditions he offered were not in his power
to fulfil. All her instincts told her this man’s word was valueless.
“I can do nothing until I have seen Mr. Dorn.”
Why she mentioned the detective’s name at all, she could not
understand. She wanted time. She mentioned the first name that
occurred to her, and might as well have referred to Mr. Shaddles.
“Dorn! So that’s how the land lies, eh? Michael Dorn is the favoured
gentleman? Well, Dorn or no Dorn, you’ll marry me to-morrow morning at
ten o’clock. I’ve gone too far to pull back now. And Dorn’s dead,
anyway.”
“Dead?” she cried in horror.
“He came here this morning, looking for you, and----”
The door was opening slowly.
“I don’t want you, Tappatt. Shut the door, damn you!”
But still it was moving, slowly, slowly. And then around the edge came
the black muzzle of a pistol, an arm, and then, last, the smiling face
of Michael Dorn!
“Put up your hands, Praye!” he said. “I want you!”
As the door opened and the hand came in, Chesney Praye’s fingers
closed around an ebony ruler, and then, at the hateful sight of
Michael Dorn’s face, he struck at the oil lamp that stood on the
table. There was a crash, a jangle of broken glass, and Lois screamed.
Praye darted past her; she heard the thud of the door, and a grunt
from somebody. In another second the two men were at grips and she
shrank back farther and farther into a corner of the room, as tables
and chairs became involved in the struggle. She heard Chesney
screaming for the doctor at the top of his voice.
“Doctor--help! Get this swine!” And there came to the frightened ears
of the girl the sound of the door being wrenched open, the scurry of
footsteps, and Chesney’s voice was silent.
“Stay where you are!”
The room reeked with the smell of kerosene.
“Don’t strike a light,” said Michael’s voice, but even as he spoke a
white flame leapt up from the hearth. The flowing oil had reached some
red-hot embers, and in a second the whole floor was blazing.
The girl was paralysed with fear, but before she could move he had
picked her up and carried her into the passage.
“Go into the back, quick! The dogs won’t hurt you,” he said, and flew
up the stairs, bursting into Mrs. Pinder’s prison.
The room in which Mrs. Pinder had been confined was empty. There was
no sign of the doctor or of the woman. He came down into the hall
again and ran to the front door. As he opened the door, he saw
Chesney’s big car going full speed towards the closed gates. There was
a crack and a crash, the gates flew open, and the tail lights
disappeared as the car turned on to the road.
The front room was now blazing. He tried the housekeeper’s room: that
also was empty. There was no need for further search. Dr. Tappatt had
got away, and with him the unhappy mother of Lois.
He rejoined the girl and she told him what had happened before he came
into the room.
“That is it,” he said bitterly. “The doctor was listening at the door
and, thinking he was going to be left in the lurch, decided to make
his getaway. When Praye turned your mother from the room he must have
put her into the car, and probably unfastened the gate when he heard
the fight.”
“Where will he have taken her? What will happen?” she asked fearfully.
Her nerve had gone, and she clung to him like a frightened child, and
as he held the quivering figure in his arms, the world and all its
sordid horrors dropped away from him and for a second he lived in a
heaven of happiness.
“Child, child!” His hand trembled as it touched her cheek. “Your
mother is not in danger--they dare not.”
“I am an hysterical fool!” she sobbed as she rubbed her face against
his coat. “But, Michael, I am so frightened. What will happen to my
mother?”
“Nothing; they will not dare injure her.”
The fire had taken hold; great tongues of flame were leaping up from
the roof.
“It will burn like tinder. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she said, in surprise.
“I mean I’m sorry to see property destroyed. I don’t suppose it is
insured,” was his strange reply. “I’ll pull the Buick out of the shed
before the fire gets to it.”
As they were walking across the yard to the extemporised garage, he
caught her arm and drew her from the path, and, looking down, she saw
the stiff figure of a dog.
“I had to shoot them,” he said. “I used a silencer, because I thought
the doctor would hear.”
“But they told me you were dead?”
“I’ll tell you about it some day,” he answered briefly, and gave his
whole attention to breaking the lock of the shed.
Presently he hauled out the car and examined the petrol tank.
“There is enough to get us to the nearest village,” he said; “the
spare tin is full.”
He got the car round to the front of the house, and was standing
watching the havoc of the flames when the first police cyclist came
thunderously from the direction of Whitcombe.
“Nobody is hurt except me,” said Michael in answer to the man’s
enquiry, “and in my case it is only a question of feelings. You didn’t
pass a car on your way?”
“Yes, I passed a big car, with three or four people in it.”
“Which way did they go?”
“They took the Newbury Road.”
“Then we also will take the Newbury Road,” said Michael.